Transnational Techniques of Analysis – By Ananya Roy: [Abstract] The American paradigm of propertied citizenship has far-reaching consequences for the propertyless, as in the brutal criminalization of the homeless. Activist groups, such as the anarchist squatter organization Homes Not Jails, have sought to challenge this paradigm through innovative techniques of property takeovers, invocations of American […]

By Massimo de Angelis: It is becoming increasingly clear that the current economic, social and environmental crises are degrading the conditions of everyday life for a vast range of people in many parts of the world, and are even posing apocalyptic threats to our social and ecological reproduction. It is also clear that the global […]

By Richard Sennett: I want to explore the concept of ‘quality of life’ in cities. My own view can be stated simply: the quality of life in a city is good when its inhabitants are capable of dealing with complexity. Conversely, the quality of life in cities is bad when its inhabitants are capable only […]

By Be Young and Shut up: In the much debated discourse over the consequences of economic globalization and the pervasive constructs of neoliberal governmentality that is seemingly creeping into every imaginable space of the world today, it appears that the contested frameworks of citizenship and the democratic principles it assumes have once again come into […]

By Judith Butler: In the last months there have been, time and again, mass demonstrations on the street, in the square, and though these are very often motivated by different political purposes, something similar happens: bodies congregate, they move and speak together, and they lay claim to a certain space as public space. Now, it […]

By Isabell Lorey: The young protest is most welcome. The many national and increasingly transnational protest movements of 2011 meet with much sympathy, especially when they are ‘non-violent’. At last there is a collective uprising against the political, economic and social developments in financial market capitalism, the untenable precarious living and working conditions in neoliberalism, […]

By Andrea Cornwall: [excerpt] What this case suggests is that deliberative democratic theory might usefully pay closer attention to contention and contestation as attributes of a deliberative process that strengthen, rather than threaten, its democratic potential. Spaces of “empowered participatory governance” like the conselho are not just neutral management spaces, they are inherently political spaces: […]

By Jeffrey Rubin: Social movements in Brazil have experienced a unique trajectory: they have grown and flourished during a twenty-year period of discernible and highly uneven democratic deepening. As a result, Brazilian activists face ongoing and urgent questions about the location of politics. Since the mid-1980s, many grassroots activists have opted to move from “the […]

By Lucy Taylor Read full article at Bulletin of Latin American Research (…) Despite such critiques, many people in many ways are becoming more like citizens. They are more certain of their value as individuals in relation to others who are richer and more powerful, and they are better aware of their rights (because the […]

By Simon Crhichley: “(…) is politics conceivable without religion? The answer is obviously affirmative as the evidence of various secular political theories testifies. But is politics practicable without religion? That is the question. And that is the question that Rousseau’s thinking of politics faces. Can politics become effective as a way of shaping, motivating and […]

Capital is a social relation, not a human group (o capital é uma relação social, não uma patota)

It is therefore necessary to criticize the conceptions which attach a central role to the forms of personal domination as well as the demands of “self-management” and a “real democracy” (or “direct”), in all its variants. It is also necessary to underline the limits of a large part of the traditional anarchist discourse, which is too preoccupied with the political and organizational aspects of alienation. The history of failed revolutions is not limited to the betrayal of the good revolutionary people by their leaders, corrupted by the exercise of power – even if this aspect has obviously been added to it. People and leaders often share the same fetishistic ways. In a fetish society, the purest form of self-management is useless. There is no need to break your head on the thousand and one details of a direct democracy guaranteed “anti-manipulation”, about the “mandate” modalities that will exist in a direct democracy or about the right balance of the political unities, if what is decided in the most democratic way of the world is always the execution of unconsciously systemic imperatives.